


not enough (‘till it strains my heart)

by tooshy



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, Summer Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 15:32:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16328702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tooshy/pseuds/tooshy
Summary: “I’ll tell you if you tell me.”(Or, a glimpse of a confession under the summer moonlight.)





	not enough (‘till it strains my heart)

Jeno’s saved from dozing off at the seashore by the water lapping at his feet, reaching his heels before retreating back to the ocean.

There's sand between his toes and sticking to his skin, which probably should be uncomfortable, but if anything it just makes him want to dig his feet in deeper, roll around on the great expanse of golden soil until he can never fully wash it off. So that this place stays with him for days to come. So he can carry around the sound of waves breaking, the salty smell of seaweed in the air, the feeling of wind on his bare skin.

A _pat pat_ betrays the illusion of stillness that almost lulled Jeno back to sleep, and the steps halt to a stop next to his head. They crouch down, lay on the sand, roll on their back, and Jeno turns on his side to stare at the one who decided to barge into the plastic quiet he had built up.  

“No stars,” Jaemin comments, eyes on a night sky that’s almost bare of gleaming dots. In their place there's a garland of clouds over an array of greys and blues. Reminiscent of the city sky, spotless and vast.

“There used to be so many.” It's Jaemin's melancholy talking, whine prominent in his tone, the same one he uses when he wants to ask something of Jeno. In his own way, he is asking for something now, and Jeno's nothing but willing, so he takes Jaemin's hand in his and tangles their fingers together.

Their swimwear falls short keeping them warm from the chilly wind, one that’s welcome when the sun is up in the sky and it’s thirty degrees and higher, but not so much when the mere cold of the night already has them shivering. Jeno is about to suggest they go back—he’s sure dinner must be ready and on its way to lukewarm—but then Jaemin squeezes the fingers he has on his grip, and speaks in a hush, as if he’s telling a secret the sea is not allowed to hear.

“Remember our first summer here?”

Memories are always blurry for Jeno. There are details everyone seems to recall except for him, bits he doesn’t quite know if they really happened or if he made them up just to fill in the blanks. Birthdays, weekend getaways, nights out, parties—they all merge together at some point. It’s a wonder, then, how every summer holiday on this beach is engraved on his memory.

Fourteen and bright-eyed, they would leave their families behind as they sprinted around. Rented bikes to climb up the cliff that overlooks the beach, binoculars to people-watch at noon and point out shapes drawn by stars at midnight, and every walk back to their families’ cabain ending up as a race.

“We stargazed every night,” Jeno smiles, swinging their joint hands up and down. They plough into the sand and then raise back up, only to fall again, and Jeno finds a metaphor in there somewhere. How they may crash down but they’re always, always lifting each other back on their feet no matter what. Something along those lines.

“The last time, too.” Jeno nods against Jaemin’s shoulder, letting him know he’s listening, letting him know he knows. Jaemin asks tautologically if he remembers it, and Jeno nods once more, just to humour him.

“It was nice,” Jeno croaks out, sleepiness seeping in his voice, but the mirth from recalling their last summer is there. “Everyone came.”

Mark, Donghyuck and Renjun had joined them. Surprisingly, it had taken little to no begging their families for it—arrangements were quick, the summer approached fast and then it had been all five of them on that cliff, on that beach, chasing each other round and round, pressing close together under thin, almost-see-through blankets, the only ones the summer heat would allow them.

“The last night, when we made the bonfire and we played truth or dare.” There’s no _remember?_ etched onto it like all the other memories Jaemin’s brought up. This one he states, equal parts inquisitive and certain. “You kept choosing dare until you didn’t, and Hyuck asked you if you liked anyone.”

Jeno has never blushed harder than that day. They had taken his silence as a big bold yes, and then they had teased and prodded until they got tired of measuring how much redder Jeno’s face could get without getting an answer from him, moving on when they sensed he was bordering on the brink of uncomfortable. And that had been it, until today.

“We never got it out of you, who that was,” Jaemin says redundantly, eyes searching for Jeno’s, which seem a bit too invested on Jaemin’s black chain necklace that falls right over his heart. “You still like them?”

Jeno says nothing. Big bold yes.

Seconds drag by as if they were minutes, the crash of the waves and the smell of seaweed and the sand in his hair muting everything else, until Jaemin scoots closer. He barely murmurs, but still manages to be louder than the whistle of the wind and the water that abruptly meets the shore.

“I like someone too, you know?” he starts, tentatively. Jeno looks up from Jaemin’s chest to find a smile dipped in honey and eyes full of wonder, warmth in his touch and his voice. “I’ll tell you if you tell me.”

An alarm goes off somewhere in Jeno’s brain, but all he can get himself to ask is, “at the same time?”

A nod. “On three.”

Jeno closes his eyes and opens them a moment later when he feels a gaze still fixed on him. With his free hand—the one that’s not vined around Jaemin’s waist, held captive between the sand and the dip of his torso—he reaches out and places the tips of his fingers over Jaemin’s eyelids, slowly dragging them down until they close on its own accord.

With eyes shut and a voice that drowns in the wind and the water, unable to stand a chance next to Jaemin’s, Jeno counts aloud.

_One, two, three._

“You.”

”Renjun.”


End file.
